The newly formed transitional government under Prime Minister Garry Conille faced immediate and simultaneous tests of its capacity and credibility: a security situation that remained catastrophically bad despite the formation of the new government, a humanitarian emergency that was deepening by the week, and the organizational challenges of building a functioning government from scratch in an environment of institutional weakness and political division.
Conille’s government inherited institutions that had been depleted by years of crisis, corruption, and the exodus of skilled public servants who had left for safer conditions abroad or in the private sector. Ministries that were supposed to provide essential services — health, education, water, agriculture — were staffed by skeleton crews with limited resources and even more limited capacity to operate in the security environment of 2024.
The relationship between the transitional government and the Transitional Presidential Council that technically oversaw it was itself a source of tension, as political actors on the council sought to influence ministerial appointments and policy decisions in ways that sometimes conflicted with the technocratic approach that Conille’s selection had been intended to signal.
International partners providing support to the transitional government emphasized that their continued engagement depended on visible progress on concrete benchmarks: the expansion of security operations by the Kenya mission, the restoration of humanitarian access to affected communities, the establishment of an electoral council, and the definition of a credible timeline for elections. Meeting these benchmarks in the difficult conditions of 2024 would require both governance capacity and political will that the transitional arrangement was still working to demonstrate.